Authors: Jörgen Pettersson & Sascha Düerkop
Åland – Birthplace of Nordic women’s football
The Åland Islands are an archipelago of almost 7.000 islands roughly halfway between Sweden and Finland. While the majority of the 30.000 inhabitants speak Swedish, the islands are an autonomous part of the Republic of Finland. They are often acknowledged as hosting the first women’s international football match in Scandinavia, between Finland and Sweden, in 1973. However, this is only a small part of its football history. A story in which Åland actually may lay a larger claim to that “first” themselves.
First organised steps
On the 20th of May 1971, Ascension Day, a historic moment took place in Mariehamn, the capital of the Åland Islands: IFK Mariehamn and Hammarlands IK, two clubs from the main island of the archipelago, organised a women’s football match in the Central Sport Arena. The match was a curtain raiser for a men’s game between the same two clubs and attracted 1,100 spectators, an astonishing crowd in a city that has a population just ten times as big. IFK won the match, while the exact score is unrecorded. That match was historic, as it is the first known women’s football match on the archipelago. It was a long-planned match that followed an entire summer of training, as several clubs from the islands decided to start women’s football programs.
That Åland’s clubs decided to set-up women’s teams was not an official initiative, but rather addressed a growing demand of the women on the islands. In the 1960s and 1970s, women’s football slowly gained ground in both Sweden and Finland and thus Ålanders increasingly demanded access to the sport as well. The players-to-be approached clubs, seeking for teams or at least training times. Some clubs did indeed open their doors, while others were cautious or hesitant. Many of the clubs at the time worried that women’s football programs might draw resources away from the men’s programs.
A few of the (male) leaders in Åland’s sports associations, however, were supportive from an early stage. Folke Woivalin and Janke Sundberg, for example, recognised that equality in sport was inevitable and ensured that women’s football moved beyond mere tolerance to gain an organisational football with the previously all-male Football Association (Ålands Fotbollförbund, ÅFF).
Regular competition – on and off the islands
The first match was followed by a local league, the inaugural season held in 1971. Just a year later, however, many of the Åland clubs moved further and joined the national competitions in Finland. IFK Mariehamn, Hammarlands IK and IF Finströmskamraterna joined the Finnish national championship, which at the time was held as a cup competition after an initial group stage.
All three teams played in the regional “Group 4” of the championship, joining two clubs from Turku. Mariehamn finished joint first with Turku PS, but lost the play-off match between the two sides, which determined that Turku PS would proceed to nationwide knock-out stages. Turku would make it all the way to the semi-final, narrowly losing to later champions HJK Helsinki, demonstrating that the gap between Mariehamn and the very top of Finland’s women football was narrow at the time.
When the Finnish FA adapted to a league system in 1974, some Åland clubs would be drafted to the third Division “Turku and Åland Islands league” initially. IF Finströmskamraterna would win that initial season and get promoted, while IFK Mariehamn and Jomala IK remained in the Third Division. Meanwhile, Sunds IF got relegated and joined Hammarlands IK and Östernäs, the Åland clubs that started their venture into the Finnish league system, in the Fourth Division. Fram Saltvik, finally, also played in the Fourth Division in this first season, but got relegated further immediately.
The birth of international football on Åland
On the 25th of April 1973, Mariehamn hosted a match that would become a pivotal moment in the football history of the entirety of Scandinavia. The Finnish national team met their Swedish counterparts in a match sometimes called “the first Nordic match” today. The match was once again played in Mariehamn’s Central Sport Arena and ended in a 0-0 draw – a huge success for the Finnish team, given that Sweden was the clear favourite and reportedly had a ball possession close to 75%. The match attracted an unbelievable 1,500 spectators and was broadcasted live on Finnish national TV, which humbled the Swedish team that came by boat to Åland and was apparently impressed by the professional setup in Mariehamn.
While that was a truly historic moment and indeed the first FIFA-recognised international football match of any Scandinavian women’s national team, it was not the actual first international football match. Not even the first in Mariehamn. Just three months prior, the Finnish national team came to Åland for a three-day training camp, preparing for their encounter with Sweden. During that camp, Finland played its actual debut match: a 3-0 win over Åland. One might say, Åland did not just host the first ever Scandinavian women’s international match – Åland was the joint first selection to ever play one.
The Nordic Women’s Championship
Following the successes of 1973, the Finnish and Swedish Football Associations immediately agreed on a re-match, again to be played in Åland. This re-match took place in 1974 and was embedded into the first-ever Nordic Women’s Championship, a new annual tournament between Scandinavian women’s national teams that would be held until 1982. In its first edition in 1974, Denmark joined as a third team and matches were played in Mariehamn and Finström.
Denmark would go all the way and win the trophy, while Sweden finished second. But, for Åland, what mattered most was the successful organisation of the event itself. The small archipelago and its community of then less than 25,000 inhabitants managed to organise one of the earliest international women’s football tournaments in Europe at the time. Once again, more than 1,100 spectators attended the final and thus more than 10% of the population of Mariehamn.
Åland, one could argue, truly became a central hub for women’s football in the Nordics, hosting the same tournament again in 1977. Only Denmark hosted the Nordic Women’s Championships more often than Åland in the end (3 times).
Slow growth
Despite being in the spotlight of Nordic international football, the development of the sport on the islands itself still faced its challenges. Many of the clubs initially did not run programs for girls, leaving many local girls to just train alone and join a club when they are old enough to play in the main squad of their local club. Even within the clubs, the women’s teams kept struggling to get training times, equipment or facilities, as they were often an afterthought in the plannings of the clubs. The number of female football players on the archipelago still rose, although slowly enough that most Finnish regions would leapfrog them over the years.
At that time, Åland also saw the rise of its first football star: Åsa Wennström. Wennström, a PE teacher from the archipelago, initially played for the local club IF Finströms Kamraterna, but would move on to play for Hammarby IF in the Swedish first Division. From 1975, she played for the Finnish national team 30 times, becoming only the third female footballer of the year in Finland in 1978.
Stagnation
Over the following decades, the development of women’s football in Åland stagnated. As Frederika “Kika” Sundberg, one of the key figures of IF Finströms Kamraterna, put it in an article onf the sport in 1994: “Women’s football had enjoyed a flying start, but it had never been given full room to grow”.
The financial resources remained limited, with club’s funding still mostly going to the men’s teams, while women often had to fundraise their own events by volunteering or selling products. There was a shortage of female coaches and community leaders, as the few that grew up on the island often left for the Swedish or Finnish mainlands.
Sundberg, in her 1994 text, argues that women’s football mostly followed the men’s game: they played under the same conditions, with the same match length and adopting the same rules, which constantly led to comparisons to the men’s game. She argues that it might have been better if the women would have had a chance to co-create the sports, in a way that would instead be best for and most requested by the players itself.
The reunion of an Åland national team
In 2001, women’s football in Åland would finally see new momentum. The Island Games, an Olympic-like multi-sport event for island communities mostly from Europe, finally added women’s football to their program. Åland sent their team to the 2001 edition on the Isle of Man and immediately reached the final, where they narrowly lost 5-4 to FIFA and UEFA member the Faroe Islands.
Åland did not send a team to the next edition in 2003, but made their comeback in Shetland in 2005, again finishing second behind the Faroe Islands. From 2007, the Faroe Islands did not compete in the football tournaments of the Island Games anymore, resulting in a period of Åland dominance in the women’s tournament. They won three editions consecutively in 2007, 2009 and 2011.
In 2001 and 2007, the Åland squad featured one of the biggest names in women’s football on the archipelago: Annica Sjölund. The striker also played 67 internationals with Finland and is the team’s fifth best goalscorer of all times with 17 goals.
The union of Åland’s clubs
In 2004, Åland’s clubs made a revolutionary move rarely seen anywhere – they united. Lemlands IF and IF Finströms Kamraterna merged their women’s programs entirely and formed a new club, aptly named Åland United. Later, Sunds IF, Mariehamn IFK, Saltviks IF and Fram would all join that cooperative, making it increasingly professional in the process.
As a result, Åland had a split women’s football system: while girls were still playing and developing within their local clubs, Åland provided a professional outlet that brought together the most talented players from the archipelago in an elite training center in Mariehamn. Ålanders could now fully develop into professional footballers without ever leaving the islands.
To new heights
The cooperative structure proved to be a massive success. In 2009, just five years after its foundation, Åland United won the Finnish championship for the first time. It was the first time any football team, male or female, from Åland could lift any nationwide trophy in Finland. More titles for Åland would follow in 2013 and 2020, establishing the club as one of the strongest in Finland.
Due to the successes in Finland, Åland United qualified for European football repeatedly, welcoming some of the best clubs on the continent to Wiklöf Holding Arena, as the stadium is called today. This included German side 1.FFC Turbine Potsdam, two-time Champions league winners.
Åland United and the Åland national team
The very unique setup of Åland United has formed a professional women’s football team that is competing for major trophies in an unlikely place like Åland. More crucially, however, it has slowly grown into being something like a second representative side of the archipelago. It does represent almost 7,000 islands that form a unique international status as a quasi-independent and fully autonomous territory. The club is just as unique as the islands it is based on.
Meanwhile, the representative side does still compete at the Island Games, too. While it has struggled to compete for the trophy in the last few editions, it still provides a representative team for the island.
And this unique system is capable of growing talents into stars, such as Adelina Engman, who played for both the Åland Island Games team and Åland United, before moving to Göteborg, Chelsea, Montpellier and Como and thus playing in most of the big leagues in Europe. While she did represent Åland via club and country, she has moved on to get more than 100 caps for the Finnish national team too.
Be First to Comment